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But Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, noted some disturbing trends. Although median household income rose for four consecutive years, the rate of growth and the income level has slowed significantly and is slightly below where it was almost two decades ago. “It’s a step in the right direction, but most families barely made up the ground lost” with the recession, she said.

The folks at the Economic Policy Institute rerun the numbers each year to get an apples-to-apples snapshot — which presumably they’re doing furiously as we write. In last year’s figures, median household income still hadn’t surpassed its peak in 2007 — before everything fell apart in 2008.

“While any reduction in poverty or increase in income is a step in the right direction, most families have just barely made up the ground lost over the past decade,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

After accounting for inflation and measurement changes, median household income is just above the prerecession mark in 2007 but slightly lower than the 2000 level, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

Median household income is higher, after inflation, than it was a decade ago, Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a phone call with reporters. But it still remains slightly lower than it was in 2000, when the dot-com boom peaked. The Census reported no increase in income inequality in 2018 according to most standard measures, including the Gini index. (The Census did not include a calculation of income share for the top one percent in income distribution, which likely continued its decade-long rise.)

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EPI is an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States. EPI’s research helps policymakers, opinion leaders, advocates, journalists, and the public understand the bread-and-butter issues affecting ordinary Americans.